Governmental supply chain regulations have proliferated over the last decade, but national laws vary in terms of their shape, material scope, supply chain scope, monitoring and enforcement methods, and relationship to legal liability. This is likely to lead to variation in regulatory stringency. In this study, we analyze whether such variation matters when it comes to shaping company policies related to human rights and labor protection. Specifically, we focus on how regulatory stringency across countries and over time shapes corporate policies to address human and worker rights and examine its potential effectiveness as a regulatory instrument. We empirically test our expectations by combining detailed firm-level time-series data with an innovative measure of the regulatory stringency of laws and norms across OECD countries. Our findings support the hypothesis that regulatory stringency has a positive impact on responsible business conduct, especially among companies that were lagging behind prior to regulation. The analyses have important implications for the study of human rights due diligence and, more broadly, corporate governance.